The present invention relates to maintenance apparatus in general, and more particularly to a support stand for a core harvester machine useful for, inter alia, providing aeration to turf, such as may be found on a golf course.
In the prior art, various machinery of a highly specialized kind has been developed for use in turf maintenance, such as ground aeration. One such widely used apparatus is that set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,878,802 entitled: "MACHINE FOR COLLECTING GROUND PARTICLES AND THE LIKE" to Hansen et al., and issued on Nov. 7, 1989.
These and other prior art machines have continued to provide a number of advantages in the care of turf surface, principally by means of gathering turf plugs and/or core particles resulting from the aeration of the turf surface, through the utilization of means operative to traverse the ground, and with associated means conveying such core particles or turf plugs upwardly, such as for example on a conveyor belt, and for dumping into an associated receptacle transported by a vehicle common to the core harvester machine and the collecting receptacle. Such conveyor means for these prior art core harvester machines is in preferred embodiments supported upon a truss frame arrangement in a generally parallelogrammic linkage arrangement which supports the conveyor means on ball joints for rotation substantially about its longitudinal axis. Such apparatus makes it possible to raise the lower receiving end of the conveyor vertically a greater distance at the upper end of the conveyor when the conveyor is raised to an inoperative position such as for transport. Such prior art core conveyor apparatus also preferably includes a shock absorbing support wheel which supports the conveyor and prevents side moments from acting upon the transport vehicle due to the side mounting of the conveyor.
Although these and other prior art core harvester machines have provided substantially improved functioning to assist in turf maintenance, and in particular have facilitated the aeration of such turf surfaces, maintenance operations on the core harvester machine, per se, have been of somewhat increased difficulty and in particular due to the desirable features of its side mounted and pivotable design have presented certain difficulties in a typical golf course maintenance shop and especially where only one person is available to mount, dismount and/or remount the core harvester machine into and from the operative position upon the transporting vehicle means for collecting turf plugs or other particles.
Accordingly, it is a material object of the improved support stand for a core harvester machine of the present invention to provide for improved and more efficient dismountability and transportation thereof, and for facilitating and ease of remounting the core harvester machine from an inoperative position back into the operative position upon conclusion of maintenance thereon.
These and other objects and advantages of the support stand for a core harvester machine of the present invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the following summary of the invention, brief description of the drawing, detailed description of preferred embodiments, appended claims, and associated drawings.